Presence and absence of the locative clitic «hi»

Abstract

This article focuses on some syntactic contexts that allow avoiding the locative clitic hi, and that, in some cases, can even force such avoidance. However, the presence or the absence of this pronoun is not arbitrary. We analyse an aspect of locative verbs and verbs of inherently directed motion, which concerns the interface properties, such as the lexicon-syntax and the syntax-pragmatics interfaces: the functional category Deixis. We assume a neoconstructionist approach, according to which some aspects of the sentential meaning are determined by the syntactic structure, whereas other aspects come from the lexical elements.